A year of great cycling experiences!
Posted September 15, 2011
I’ve loved cycling for a long time now and when I started out I used to get my thrills from going to watch the British races. I’ve always been quite a confident person and not scared to make a bit of a fool of myself, so I would just go and talk to the riders if I wanted to – hence how I met my boyfriend Rob Partridge! (Although if I am totally honest, I did just happen to go over to have my photo taken with his team mate Ian Wilkinson!!!).
Rob has had some great results, last year he was 8th overall in the Tour of Britain and best British rider, he won Ryedale GP and this year he won the tour series in Oldham; all of which I was lucky enough to witness in real life. The buzz is amazing and the atmosphere at these kinds of races is addictive.
From then my obsession has grown from domestic racing to international racing and I have had some great experiences this year. Me, my son and my best friend went to watch the Tour de France on Plateau de Beille in July. We found our spot 5k up the mountain and awaited the riders with eager anticipation, brimming with excitement!
We took a welsh flag and wrote “Geraint” on it as he is one of Rob’s friends and we wanted to cheer him on. As the riders started coming past we were screaming and jumping about like mad people and then I spotted Geraint’s smiling face coming towards us. We cheered even louder and then he rode over to us and gave Ben (my son) his bottle out of his bottle cage before he carried on with the race. I don’t think anybody around us could believe what they had just seen and it certainly made our day! We felt extremely lucky to have had that experience, thanks G!
I have to say, though, that recently I experienced something quite phenomenal. I am still getting butterflies in my stomach when I think about it and I can’t stop looking through the photos; it was only 2 days ago, mind. At the start of the Tour of Britain, stage 2 in Kendal, Katie (my Tour de France buddy) and I started to have a walk around the team buses. It was a horrible rainy, windy morning, so much so that the stage was shortly going to be cancelled. We didn’t really expect to see much as the riders usually stay on their buses in conditions like this. I always like to get some good photos so I decided to ask the Leopard Trek staff if I could pretend to get on the bus so that Katie could take a picture of me. As I put my foot on the step, none other than Joost Posthuma started to call us up to actually come onto the bus.
I looked tentatively at the staff who gave me the nod and on I went, closely followed by Katie. Joost was a very good host, he showed us around the bus and gave us various hats, postcards and other paraphernalia including some cherry cake and a picture of Fabian Cancellara specially for me! We had a coffee made by one of the members of staff and were there we were for a good 10-15 minutes!
It was there we learnt that the race had been cancelled, so we watched everyone do a lap around Kendal before they returned to the bus, only for us to get on AGAIN as Katie had brought some cakes down from the car to give everyone. I took the opportunity to have a photo with them all and thanked them for a fantastic experience. We also met Thor Hushovd that day (main picture at top).
Here is a little video of our time on the Leopard Trek bus (forgive the squealing and giggling). In my time I’ve also met most of the British pro’s – Brad, Cav etc and even been on the Sky bus at the National Championships.
If anybody ever feels nervous or unconfident about approaching riders, be they domestic Pro’s or international Pro’s, my advice is to just do it if you have the opportunity.
Life is too short to be too scared to say hello and most of the time I have found everybody is extremely friendly. Some of them will have their photo taken and then expect you to go away but others will chat and be friendly. You never know unless you try!!
